SBOE Candidate: Barbara Cargill

Because of redistricting, all 15 seats on the Texas State Board of Education will be up for grabs in the November 2012 elections. The results of those elections will determine whether the religious right’s corrosive influence over public education will weaken or grow as the board considers what the next generation of public school students in Texas will learn about sex education, social studies, science and other subjects. We plan to publish on TFN Insider candidate announcements for a seat on the SBOE. We will publish announcements in no particular order, and their publication does not constitute any sort of endorsement by TFN. We will redact requests for contributions or mentions of fundraising events from the announcements, but we will provide links to the candidates’ websites (if available).

Barbara Cargill, District 8, R-The Woodlands
(Incumbent)

Barbara Cargill has indicated that she will seek re-election next year to her District 8 seat on the Texas State Board of Education. Gov. Rick Perry appointed Cargill, who first won election to her seat in 2004, as board chair in July of this year. An outspoken member of the board’s far-right faction, she has supported efforts to water down instruction 0n evolutionary science and voted to adopt new social studies curriculum standards that the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute criticized as “heavily politicized.” Her campaign website is here.

Cargill made her bid for re-election clear in an October 6 “Cargill Connection” e-newsletter to supporters. We have deleted the explicit fundraising appeal in the excerpt below:

I have now led two board meetings and want to thank you for your prayers and words of encouragement. The celebration/fundraising event here in The Woodlands made us feel supported and appreciated – just what I, my husband, and our boys needed! In honor of my appointment as Chair, Governor Perry graciously recorded a message that you can view on this link. Please take a minute to enjoy it.

. . . . Donations whether large or small are needed and appreciated as I continue serving our children as a conservative voice in Austin! Thank you for allowing me that privilege.

I wonder how many students in schools, colleges and universities would say they have the academic freedom to critique evolution in their science classes? There should be school district and state polls of high-school and college/university students studying evolution, asking two questions:

In this class:
a) Is evolution taught as fact, theory, or both fact and theory?
b) Do you have the academic freedom to critique evolution?
[Students should answer anonymously.] The same questions should be asked of their instructors.

Evolution is a fact and a theory. People who ask those type of questions are seriously ignorant and don’t have the required intelligence to spend time explaining what science actually is. Why don’t we just ban religion? In our US constitution? Religion is a myth and gets in the way of progress….

The American system, including the Constitution didn’t openly use the term “democratic” until the British propaganda machine sold their kingdom as a democracy and asked for help in fighting two other monarchies. The term used was “republic” which was meant to mean one ruled by a legislature as in a “republican form of government” as guaranteed in the Constitution.

The original Constitution and the then existing republican state governmens gave a limited suffrage to those who had property or other means of income. Elected politicians acted in their own selfish reasons to get reelected then expanded the right to vote and pandered to the needs of the lesser enriched. To that extent, the republic became democratized in fact, with women getting the right to vote during WW1.

The original founders (the first four sets who wrote and passed the body of the Constitution ( 1789), those who wrote and passed the Bill of Rights (1791), those who wrote and passed the 11th Amendment (1795), and those who wrote and passed the 12th Amendment (1803) were wary of political partisanship, something the Electoral College was expected to dampen. It was also not clear how much of the Bill of Rights applied to the states.

Important in the Pro-Founders pitch of the Tea Party and the Partonites is that no amendments after the 12th is considered valid. That is the part the Tea Party wants to “take back” which in reality means taking those amendments out of the Constitution. What comes after 12 that is important? 13, 14, & 15 are the Amendments that extended the Bill of Rights to apply within the states, demanded “due process” and freed the slaves, sort of.

What is so significant about the legislative grid lock imposed by the Tea and No Party, is that the loss of faith in the legislative process is losing faith in the republic. There are many dictators and crony states that call themselves democratic, republican, or democratic-republican, and even have universal suffrage. The most excellent book “The Dictator’s Handbook” by Bruce Bueno De Mesquita and Alastair Smth applies Pareto’s Law of 80/20 into it’s ramifications into how dictators can rule badly so long as the inner circle is kept fat and scared.

The Anti-Science Pro-Creationist political theme that serves as a unifying force within the Truly Faithful, it is by itself dangerous, so long as the Truly Faithful play according to the rules in place by the Law and the Constitution. Their so-called pro-constitution paen, on the other hand, is inverse attribution, they intend to gut the Constitution in accordance with thier vitriolic hatred of the court system, the Supreme Court, and the Congress. Once they get control of the Presidency, they hope, they can bypass the rest.

With the draw down of forces deployed overseas, the majority of whom are Guard, Reserve or contractor leaving and coming home to join the rest of the unemployed, or hoping the job they were guaranteed isn’t gone. The remainng one quarter, being regulars, have new bases for training, kids and family. There is an expectation in the Right that these are potentially available for assistance in retro revision of the Constitution of the Twelve Amendments.

As far as I can tell not only do we not have a democratic government we also do not have a republican form of government. And now that corporations have been deemed to be persons it is going to become clearer that this is the case.

Corporations were deemed persons since before the Virginia Company issued stock to found the Jamestown colony. It went belly up financially and was taken over by the Crown in what is clearly the first government buyout in US history.

The East India Company conquered India, and the Dutch East India Company built the Dutch Empire, but by they too were bought out by their respective crowns. That is a better example of the evils of corporate domination, not this tepid knock off we have today or the confusion of the untenured.

Incorporation is what people do to run a business including Mom and Pop stores, institutions of lower learning, and the majority of business in the US. This was not cute in the days of treason and rebellion of the Sixties when it was unopposed. It could become dangerous to life and limb should the Occupation meet the Tea Party in open combat.

The point i think you are trying to make is that all of a sudden out of the blue, Corporations were deemed as legal equivalents of a person insofar as corporate responsibility including records of a set of corporate rules governing who does what, and how the resources are to be controlled. Tax laws for corporations are written with full understanding that their plumbing is in buildings, not within the corporate work processes.

The degree to which the corporate person is liable for criminal action varies, with only the officers of the company having serious liability problems, Personal liability in personal activities such as murder, speeding, or tax dodging as in individual does not carry over to the corporation.

It is also a matter of interest in law as to the liability of the owners for corporate violations of law. which owners are those who own the stock, and may haven no direct responsibilities for actions of the corporation. Owners have a collective say by buying and selling share, and occaisionally at share owners meetings. Stock ownership is still the number one way that the American people’s various retirement plans are funded.

The current fear on Wall Street between fear of the Tea Party and Fear of Liberal tax policies has led to a corporate world too scared to invest. I have pulled my money out of the stock market into bonds from which I may have to pull my money into cash only. Every one is waiting for the corporations to start spending by hiring and producing goods. Public sector enterprises are often incorporated such as public universities, the USPS, and other agencies.